Trio of Foster faculty named Marketing Science Institute Scholars

Not one, not two, but three faculty of the University of Washington Foster School of Business have been selected as 2020 Scholars of the Marketing Science Institute, the unique research association of leading marketing academics and marketing executives from more than 70 firms.

Hema Yoganarasimhan, Oliver Rutz and Nidhi Agrawal of Foster’s Department of Marketing and International Business have been named to this year’s class of MSI Scholars, joining 2018 honoree Robert Palmatier.

Established in 2018, the MSI Scholars program recognizes mid-career researchers who have a keen understanding of the importance of academic-practitioner partnerships and whose ideas can be used for practical application. Selection is highly competitive—only two schools claim four members—and considers field service, leadership, citations and impact, research productivity/quality and the relevance of the candidate’s research.

Hema Yoganarasimhan is a professor of marketing and Michael G. Foster Faculty Fellow with affiliate appointments in the UW’s Allen School of Computer Sciences and Engineering, Department of Economics and Center for Statistics in the Social Sciences. She’s also the founding faculty director of the Foster School’s forthcoming Center for Customer Analytics, which will deploy academic research to solve developing challenges of partner companies.

Recognized as one of the leading experts in quantitative marketing, Yoganarasimhan’s research brings together large-scale marketing data, economic theory and econometric and machine learning tools to help firms optimize and automate marketing decisions.

She has received the Adobe Digital Marketing Research Award (2017), the John D.C. Little Best Paper Award (2013), the Frank M. Bass Outstanding Dissertation Award (2012) and the MSI Alden G. Clayton Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Award (2008).

Yoganarasimhan is a four-time recipient of the Management Science Meritorious Service Award (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015). In 2015, she was recognized as an MSI Young Scholar.

At Foster, where she teaches analytics for marketing decisions, dynamic structural models in marketing and a marketing core course, Yoganarasimhan has received the PhD. Mentor Award (2017) and the Lex N. Gamble Family Award for Excellence in Case Development and Curriculum Innovation (2018).

She serves as co-editor of the journal Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and as associate editor of Management Science and Marketing Science.

Oliver Rutz is the Marion B. Ingersoll Professor and an associate professor of marketing. His research contributes valuable insights to search engine marketing and online advertising.

Rutz, who has taught courses in marketing strategy, customer analytics, marketing models and innovation, is the founding faculty director of Foster’s Master of Science in Business Analytics Program.

He is the recipient of the American Marketing Association’s William F. O’Dell Award (2016), Donald R. Lehmann Award (2013) and Paul E. Green Award (2012). He has been named three times a Top 50 Scholar (for author productivity in the premier marketing journals), by the American Marketing Association (2013, 2014, 2015).

In addition, Rutz has been a finalist for the MSI Long Term Impact Award (2020), the 2019 and 2016 Sheth Foundation Best Paper Awards (2016, 2019), the AMA’s Paul E. Green Award (2013), and the MSI’s Frank M Bass Award (2013) and Clayton Dissertation Proposal Competition (2007). He was named an MSI Young Scholar (2013).

At Foster, Rutz has won the Lex N. Gamble Family Award for Excellence in Case Development and Curriculum Innovation (2018), and the Dean’s Faculty Research Award (2012).

He is an area editor of the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and an editorial board member of Marketing Science, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Interactive Marketing and Business Research.

Nidhi Agrawal is the Michael G. Foster Professor of Marketing and International Business. Her research examines the interplay of emotions and goals in consumer information processing, and self-regulation and goals in health communications. She’s currently studying ways that social media can be used to influence consumers—on both sides of the political divide—to adopt proven COVID-19 prevention behaviors such as facemask wearing, hand washing and social distancing.

The consummate scholar and mentor, Agrawal has won the Erin Anderson Award from the American Marketing Association (2017) for the impact of her research and her coaching and development of doctoral students and junior faculty at Foster, where she is also a two-time recipient of the school’s PhD Program Mentoring Award.

Agrawal is a five-time ACR/SCP Doctoral Consortium Faculty Fellow and a five-time AMA-Sheth Doctoral Consortium Invited Faculty Fellow. She also has received the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) Early Career Award (2014) and was named an MSI Young Scholar (2011).

She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, and the Journal of Consumer Psychology. And she is a member of the UW Population Initiative Executive Council.

At Foster, Agrawal teaches courses in consumer behavior and marketing management.

Rob Palmatier is the John C. Narver Endowed Professor in Business Administration and a professor of marketing. He’s also the founding research director of the Foster School’s Center for Sales and Marketing Strategy.

Recently cited by the American Marketing Association as the world’s 12^th most-productive marketing researcher overall (and 5^th most-productive scholar in marketing strategy over the past decade), Palmatier’s research in marketing strategy, relationship marketing, marketing channel strategy and customer relationships and loyalty has been widely lauded.

He has received the AMA Award for Lifetime Contributions to Interorganizational Research (2020), the Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy (2019), the Journal of Marketing’s Harold H. Maynard Award for significant contribution to marketing theory and thought (2008, 2017), the Sheth Journal of Marketing Award (2016), the Robert D. Buzzell Award (2016, 2018), the Louis W. Stern Award (2011, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019), the Journal of Retailing Davidson Award (2019). He was selected as an MSI Young Scholar (2007) and won the AMA’s Varadarajan Award for Early Contribution to Marketing Strategy Research (2012).

At Foster, where he teaches marketing strategy in multiple programs, Palmatier has received the MBA Professor of the Year award (2008), the Robert M. Bowen EMBA Excellence in Teaching award (3x), and the PhD Mentoring Award (2010, 2015), as well as the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research (2017) and the Dean’s Leadership Award (2017).

He currently serves as co-editor of the Journal of Marketing.

Foster is one of only two schools in the world that employ four MSI Scholars (the other being the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania).

“Having four individuals selected for this honor is truly a remarkable achievement for the Foster School’s Department of Marketing and International Business,” says department chair Mark Forehand, the Pigott Family Professor in Business Administration. “And it highlights that we have become a research powerhouse.”

Another indication of Foster’s marketing research prowess: the Top 100 Business School Research Rankings lists Foster #12 in the world for total number of publications in four leading marketing journals—Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research and Marketing Science—between 2016 and 2019.